How to implement a document or records management system that meets ISO standards

I received a great follow up email from Bob, the person who originally asked me about best practices in document management systems. He shared what he found as he continued to research. Here’s his note, and it’s a very informative one at that! Thanks Bob!

[This information] might help anyone tasked with finding and implementing a records management system OR a document management system for any organization, to properly organize and execute the project.

Australia’s National Archives’ DIRKS How-To manual for government entities tells exactly how, in minute detail, to go about the process of determining your organization’s needs, orchestrating buy-in from your organization, and deciding on and implementing a records management system AS A FORMAL, ISO-COMPLIANT PROJECT:

http://www.naa.gov.au/recordkeeping/dirks/dirksman/contents.html

Technical communicators may not necessarily be schooled in Project Management fundamentals or ISO guidelines when they are tapped by their organization to help orchestrate such a project; if this applies to you, you might take a peek at this; it’s jammed with helpful practical advice and it’s the most thorough document of its type that I’ve found in several months of dogged web-digging.

One could even probably search/replace the words ‘document management’ for ‘records management’ and replace “government agency” with “Corporation” and end up with a fairly usable skeletal methodology for implementing a corporate document management system, too… as long as you understand the distinction between ‘documents’ and ‘records’…though I grant this idea might make people grind their teeth…:-)

Incidentally, there are guidelines and tips vaguely like DIRKS posted on the websites of various U.S. state Archives - for example, there’s one at:

http://www.state.mn.us/ebranch/mhs/preserve/records/tis/tableofcontents.html

Bob says he hopes this helps someone else who finds themselves in a similar situation someday. Let us know if you find it helpful and if you have any tips to add.

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Best practices for document management systems

I recently received a question about best practices for electronic document management systems using Word 2003. While I use Word 2003, I have only used it in combination with Sharepoint as a document management system, and the docs I write in Word are usually short, internal documents, not external technical manuals. Coincidentally, I’ve heard that IT departments are using document management systems in concert with their CMDB. Text-based documents, drawings, architecture designs, all these documents are important to an IT department and any business organization. It makes sense that the CMDB would be related to a document management system, although I won’t get into any discussion about whether each document is a Configuration Item (CI) or not.
My experience with document management is Documentum with FrameMaker, and we don’t currently do much co-authoring with people in the rest of the company. So I’ll admit first off, this request for information is outside my personal knowledge. But, I do like a good research question and I gathered together some reading items.

Here’s a summary of what’s found in this article about putting together a document management system using Microsoft tools. Your environment may vary widely from an accounting-type environment, though, but I thought these were decent overarching goals for managing documents, and I expanded on a few of them based on my experience with document management systems in general.

1. Determine what documents get the “document management treatment.” Create limits on what is stored and maintained in your system so that you know what’s in there and what’s not, and you also limit maintenance and a bulging file system. Will you scan and store images of paper copies?
2. Classify or group your documents together. Some EDMSes do this for you using document type, but you might also want other criteria for easy search and retrieval later. This approach also allows you to assign more than one classification to a document.
3. Store the files efficiently to make retrieval easy. Your EDMS might do this on its own with little input from you.
4. Retrieve as needed, using versioning if desired, which leads to the next step. Realize that indexing and keyword searching are crucial tasks for retrieval. Be sure to train users to properly tag documents for fast and efficient retrieval. You may have to create a taxonomy using standard terms for the system.
5. Managing and tracking documents allows for the type of collaboration where one person can check out a document to make revisions. Other collaborative activities might include activities such as participating in active discussion groups, tracking issues associated with customer engagements, maintaining common contact information for subject matter experts on a particular document, and even assigning tasks related to a particular document. Tracking and versioning also allows for storage and retrieval of documents from a point in time which may be helpful historically.

For research like this question, one place I like to do searches is answer.google.com. There was one relevant Answer for someone who was looking for an analysis of document management software. It’s long but comprehensive. I realize you might be well past the evaluation stage for a DMS, but you might get a look at what features are offered. You can also use blogsearch.google.com to search only for blog entries on a given topic, although that particular search method did not offer much on this particular topic.

Going beyond Google, I did a search using www.bloglines.com to search for blogs about “document management systems,” and the best I’ve found so far is www.docuvantage.com/blog. Another site that offers a wide range of case studies and white papers is The Gilbane Report at http://www.gilbane.com/.

There are also lessons learned from the doc management trenches at Hewlett-Packard. It appears the author is Susan Charles, an Information Research Analyst at Hewlett-Packard. She describes the implementation of an internal document management project at HP. She discusses the challenges of the project, and what she sees as the lessons learned.

In addition, here’s a case study from a university setting. I haven’t read through it completely but it might offer some advice.

As with many best practices in technology, you want to analyze first and implement second. Spending more of your time in the up front planning and definitions will pay off when you go to populate your system with documents.

Anyone else have some advice to offer? Feel free to post a comment, or use the trackback URL to write about it in your own blog and refer to this entry.

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